


ipsa scientia potestas est

by jeepsarmitage



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, HSAU, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4836062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeepsarmitage/pseuds/jeepsarmitage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> “My name is Miss Karnstein, and no I have no idea what happened to whoever I am replacing so don’t even bother asking me that question.”  </i> </p><p>or: <b> A Carmilla HSAU based on a tumblr post about what would happen if a vampire taught History </b></p>
            </blockquote>





	ipsa scientia potestas est

**Author's Note:**

> based on a [tumblr post](http://sapphireshelle91.tumblr.com/post/122575956664/answersfromvanaheim-sapphichands)

**ipsa scientia potestas est**

.

(Latin) _“knowledge itself is power”_ \- Sir Frances Bacon, 1597

**  
.**

 

She had absolutely no idea how she had ended up back here. Again.

 

Actually, that’s a lie. She knew _exactly,_ how she had ended up here, and it had nothing to do with free will and absolutely everything to do with the fucked up sort of allegiance she still felt towards her mother. For one reason or another she still picked up the phone when the woman called, and for one reason or another she always ended up agreeing to help out.

 

 _“It wont be for too long,”_ her mother said, _“Just the semester, until I can find a suitable replacement.”_

 

 _“Of course,”_ Carmilla had replied, not lingering to question exactly what ‘suitable’ entailed. _“As long as you pay me, it’ll be fine.”_

 

Her mother hummed in response. _“I’ll book your plane ticket and get an apartment organised for you. The details will be sent to you momentarily.”_

_“Of course, mother.”_

 

And her mother was nothing if not hasty, and both the flight details and apartment address were sent to her email inbox exactly one hour later. She didn’t dwell on the idea that her mother had it all worked out before Carmilla had agreed, because that would entail wondering if her mother thought her to be predictable. Or at least wonder if she wasn’t as free of her mother’s will as Carmilla would like to believe.

 

At least her mother had nice taste.

 

The apartment was small, but elegant, and fully furnished with extravagant designs Carmilla knew for a fact her mother had been hoarding for at least a century. Not that she cared, though. The intended heirs were long since buried and their descendants were probably oblivious to the fortune they could have had. And besides, if she were going to once again spend the better part of her year doing her mother’s dirty work, Carmilla wasn’t going to complain about the artefacts that decorated her apartment.

 

It wasn’t like she had to pay for it.

 

* * *

When she was conducting her studies, she hadn’t been the most diligent of students. There’s a hazy memory of her handmaiden, the woman in charge of her studies, trying in vain to get her to sit still long enough to recite a paragraph from a book she had no interest in. It was a struggle, and eventually her handmaiden had given up and allowed Carmilla to pursue her own interests.

 

It wasn’t as though she would _need_ the education, the reasoning was. Not once she married that gentleman suitor the Count had lined up for her.

 

(If only they were to know of Carmilla’s fate)

 

Not much had changed, though, and Carmilla had prepared approximately zero plans for her classes. Not that she cared, her mother had enlisted her to teach three classes and all of them were history.

 

High School history: she could do that in her sleep. And besides, it was all taught out of a textbook now, wasn’t it? She could just tell them to read the page, answer the questions; all the while she could nap in the front of the room.

 

Easy.

 

* * *

 

She actively avoided the teachers’ lounge; on the basis that she was not prepared to make friendly conversation with the people that she could guarantee would be found there. Instead, she opted to sit in her classroom, conducting a once-over of the room and finding little to engage her interests. There was a brief moment of internal debate about whether or not to write her name on the board, to which she eventually decided to do simply because she didn’t want to have to endure the introductory speech several times over.

 

By the time her first class started trickling in, Carmilla was seated at the front of the room, leaning back in her chair with her boots up on the desk, flicking through her worn copy of Plutarch’s _Roman Lives_. She was well aware of the whispers she was getting, and she made a conscious decision not to look up as the students walked past her.

 

When Carmilla did look up she was surprised to see that the majority of the class were watching her with apt attention. As she closed her book and removed her feet from the desk, she surveyed the classroom; elevating an eyebrow at the way the students’ gazes seemed to follow her movements.

 

“My name is Miss Karnstein, and no I have no idea what happened to whoever I am replacing so don’t even bother asking me that question.”

 

She stood up and walked towards the group of desks. The whispers had ceased, she noted, and she allowed a small smirk to appear on her face, looking down at the students as she passed each desk. Some looked terrified, and Carmilla had zero qualms with that. A healthy dose of fear would keep them in line for the remainder of the year, she supposed.

 

“I realise that this disruption to your learning program much be oh-so-devastating for the lot of you, because I’m sure you’re very dedicated to your studies, so how about one of you fill me in on where you left off last semester?”

 

The class appeared torn about whether the question was laced with sarcasm or not, and half laughed while the other half looked at each other with concern or confusion. Again, it made Carmilla smirk and she turned to the only person in the class who had raised their hand.

 

“Yes?”

 

“We were looking at the structure and role of the British monarchy, and how it’s changed since the sixteenth-century.”

 

Carmilla surveyed the girl who had spoken for a moment, resisting the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. The girl looked back at her, unblinking with her hands folded neatly on her desk.

 

“And you are…?”

 

“Lola Perry.”

 

“Well _Lola_ Perry, that’s certainly tedious and boring.”  She walked over to the girl’s desk and picked up the textbook, stifling a laugh when she saw that the girl had tabbed the various chapters with sticky notes. They were probably colour-coordinated too, she realised as she began flicking through it, looking for the correct chapter.

 

Skimming it briefly as she walked back to the front of the room, Carmilla almost contained her groan of annoyance. Almost. The class looked back at her, now a sea of confused faces and Carmilla realised with jolt that these kids didn’t know any better. To them, history was just that. History; something that didn’t matter beyond their final exam at the end of the year. That fact alone was enough to make Carmilla realised that she _cared_.

 

Not for the kids, but for the preservation of historical fact.

 

And fun.

 

Carmilla slammed the book shut with a thud that caused half the room to jump out of their seats. Throwing the book haphazardly to the side, she turned to the class and frowned, folding her arms across her chest and surveying the group.

 

“I’m going to be honest and say I don’t really give a damn about whatever you’ve been told, because that book-“ she pointed at the textbook laying on the ground, “is complete and utter bullshit. If that’s what you’ve been learning from I worry about the future of this world.”

 

“The textbook will give you definitions and dates and flowcharts of power structures. It’ll give you a watered down series of events that will get you a bare-minimum passing grade. And maybe that’s what you want. You want to pass and move onto college with a C- average and that’s fine. But if you want to actually _understand_ things and use more than the bare minimum of the brain cells you possess I will stand here and teach you how things _actually_ happened and maybe you can walk out of high school having learnt something.”

The spiel surprised even her, but she didn’t let it show, keeping the apathetic expression firmly plastered on her face as she once again surveyed the sea of faces in front of her. They were blank; blinking as they processed what she had just said to them, before they slowly began to nod. That was when Carmilla allowed herself to raise an eyebrow, smirk, and nod.

 

“So let me tell you something about the British monarchy…”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t understand, though, it was so great. I haven’t learnt that much in a history lesson in so long but she’s just…she _teaches_ ya know? Not like, teaches as in makes you read things and then answer the questions but like, she _tells_ it like, in an interesting way and I just… I might actually _enjoy history_ this semester…”

 

Lafontaine was babbling, and Laura tried her best not to roll her eyes at her friend’s antics. They were at lunch, and when Perry and LaF had walked over in two very different moods, Laura had inevitably asked what had happened. And she almost wished she hadn’t, with Perry ranting about how the “new history teacher was _clearly_ not qualified to teach. She has no respect for the syllabus and she, quite literally, threw the textbook across the room! We’ll have to report her!” which caused Laura to laugh and ask LaF for an explanation, which ended in twenty minutes of them babbling about how enthusiastic the new teacher is.

 

“She just _gets it_ , ya know?”

 

“I don’t know. But I have history last period so I guess I’ll find out then.”

 

“You have history?” LaF frowned, “I thought you dropped it last semester?”

 

Laura shrugged, “It looks good on my transcript. Plus, I’m not terrible at it; I just don’t particularly like it. It’ll help my GPA for college applications.”

 

LaF nodded. “I get ya. But I’m telling you, Laura, this new teacher is going to give you a whole new perspective on the subject. Even that jock that sleeps all through Lit was paying attention.”

 

“Theo?” Laura began picking at her sandwich again. “I thought he dropped out.”

 

“Nah. I think Kirsch convinced him to stay. Something about fulfilling the Zeta Code or something.”

 

Laura nodded. “Makes sense. I hope you’re right about this teacher though, I’m not sure I can handle another semester of the same old world events. Despite how good it looks on my transcript.”

 

* * *

 

There were two things Laura liked to believe about herself.

 

First: that she was a good friend, and second: She was a dedicated student.

 

The first part was relatively easy to believe, because she had at least two incredibly good friends and a handful of other friends and she cared about all of them to the point where, should Lafontaine call her in the middle of the night, Laura wouldn’t hesitate to spend several hours on the phone telling them that they weren’t wrong for being who themselves.

 

The second part was slightly harder, because while Laura got decent enough grades she was also a firm believer that the success of a student couldn’t be accurately measured by the grade that was stamped on their report card. Laura was dedicated to her studies, definitely, but she also wasn’t the sort of person to let her social life lull by locking herself in her room forever so she could study.

 

She also knew that she was somewhat lazy in that she spent an undue amount of time on the classes she liked, whilst doing the bare minimum on the subjects she wasn’t so thrilled about. Sure, she was above average in all her classes, but that didn’t mean she was clueless about the fact that she could be _better_ if she actually put some effort into certain areas.

 

Namely history.

 

It wasn’t that Laura didn’t _like_ history. She just found it somewhat intellectually unstimulating. And she’d rather put time into her English Lit work because at least in that class she wasn’t resisting the urge to doze off.

 

(It helped that Miss Lawrence wasn’t so hard on the eyes, but Laura wasn’t about to tell that to anyone. She may have been becoming more and more okay with her own levels of queer, but that didn’t mean she was ready to waltz out of Narnia just yet.)

 

Besides, she was doing well and she did put effort in, which is more than can be said for a good portion of the class, so why should she dedicate more time than she had to? It wasn’t like she was going to pursue history outside of high school, and it wasn’t her most interesting subject.

 

By that logic, Laura felt somewhat content with the way her senior year was progressing, and felt very little need to change any of it. She had good friends, good grades, and a good balance between study and socialising. Why would she need to change?

 

* * *

 

When she was told that Mr Eisen the history teacher had left and another teacher had taken his place, she isn’t sure what she thought. To be honest she hadn’t given it much thought because she didn’t particularly care for the subject and so the identity of the person that was teaching the subject was neither her nor there.

 

Upon seeing Miss Karnstein, however, that idea changed because whatever it was that she was expecting, the woman sitting at the desk in the front of the room was entirely not that. Whatever _that_ was.

 

“Take your seats, we don’t have all day.”

 

Laura hurried, falling rather ungracefully into a seat off to the side of the classroom. There weren’t many people in this class. Most people had it earlier in the day but that particular time period collided with biology so she was forced to take a later time. It didn’t particularly bother her though, because at the end of the day literally everyone was tired and maybe that meant that her full attention wouldn’t be required.

 

She was, as it was later discovered, wrong. Miss Karnstein barely missed a beat before launching into her speech.

 

“Welcome to world history. We won’t be using your textbooks this year as I’ve discovered it to be full crap. Nobody seems to care for accuracy these days.”

  
Laura found herself staring, jaw slack as Miss Karnstein began walking around the room. Except, she wasn’t walking so much as _floating_. Gliding. She moved about the room in such a fluid motion it seemed as though her feet were barely hitting the floor. It was graceful and elegant and Laura found herself watching the movements of her teacher rather than listening to the words she was saying.

 

“…And so we will be covering all the topics required of your final exam but they will be covered in a way that doesn’t make me want to throw myself into a bonfire. Okay?”

 

The class repeated a chorus of affirmative that sounded slightly more awake than Laura was used to and she blinked a few times, bringing herself back to reality and watching as Miss Karnstein began writing on the board.

 

“We will begin with Europe in the sixteenth century.”

 

For the first time in several years, Laura found herself remaining awake for an entire history lesson.

 

* * *

 

Laura liked to think that her father and her had a decent relationship. They weren’t best buddies, but she enjoyed spending time with him and she told him a fair bit about what was happening in her life. Her friends all loved him, and she was fairly certain that was because of his dorky dad jokes and the way he always tried to stay “hip” because it’s “important to connect with what your children are into, Laura. It’s in the book!”

 

(The book being one of the many parenting books her dad had picked up over the years and read so many times because he wanted to do everything right with Laura and he remained adamant that reading these books would help.)

 

(He didn’t know that he was doing everything right anyway)

 

Nevertheless, things with her dad could be a lot worse, and she never once doubted that he loved her. Which is why she wondered why she found it so hard to talk to him about… _this_.

 

Lafontaine told her to just spit it out over dinner. They were the only person that knew, but they had figured it out and came to Laura rather than the other way around. Laura had cried a lot that day, but it was nice to have at least one person to talk to about the whole thing, and LaF couldn’t be a better person to talk about all that with.

 

So Laura sat at the dinner table, listening to her dad rant on about whatever it was that he actually did all day in that office, and she twirled her spaghetti around her fork while offering the occasional nod to show that she was listening.

 

And then he stood up and kissed her forehead and she realised that yet another chance had slipped through her fingers.

 

* * *

 

The first half of the semester passed quicker than Carmilla had thought it would, and as Christmas came and went she realised that her students could have been a lot worse than they were. They seemed to pay attention to her, for the most part, and they were as engaged as she could hope they would be. Homework very rarely got turned in late and the vast majority of it was of rather high quality.

 

Overall, she couldn’t really complain.

 

So when she walked into her classroom the first day back after Christmas break she realised that she wasn’t dreading it too much. She even offered her students a small smile when they came steadily through the door in groups of two or three. They replied with a cheery “Hi Miss Karnstein!” and a few enquiries over her Christmas activities to which she replied that she had spent it marking their papers.

 

The look on their faces was one she could describe only as terrified beyond reason and so she decided to soothe them and added a quick, “you did well” at the end and left it at that.

 

* * *

 

Her classes were much in the same. They were all readily engaged in her stories, and she found the best way to motivate them to actually do the work required for their finals was to tease them with the beginning of a story and telling them that if the class finished the work she would conclude the lesson with the rest of it.

 

It worked well. Different classes liked different stories, though, and she soon found that the classes mostly composed of jocks enjoyed the bloodthirsty war tales while more mixed classes enjoyed the stories filled with triumph and victories. There was her 3rd period class that had a thing for the tormented lovers, which she personally found to be a whole new territory of torture but she humoured them anyway because they were a good class.

 

Her 6th period class was her favourite, though. They liked the stories of scandal and gossip, and Carmilla often found herself amused by the way they would all look at her with a gleam in their eyes because it gave her hope that the future generations weren’t an entirely lost cause.

 

So she would tell them the tale of Boy Jones, who used to sneak into the Palace and raid Queen Victoria’s dressing room.

 

“He’d been sneaking in and out for years,” she told them, “once he was found with the Queen’s underwear stuffed down his pants.”

 

“What happened to him?” A boy at the back had asked. Carmilla only smirked in response.

 

“You’ll have to finish your essays now wont you?”

 

They rolled their eyes but complied, and as they were packing up she told them over the commotion that “Boy Jones was caught in 1841 and sentenced to labour. He eventually ended up being sent to the Australian colonies.”

 

* * *

 

Carmilla was rarely bothered at work, but students or staff. She liked it that way, because she could go about her business without having to entertain people with false smiles and petty small talk.

 

Which was why it was incredibly strange for a knock to sound on her door five minutes into the lunch break.

 

“Come in.”

 

A head poked around the door. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Karnstein, but I was wondering if I could ask you for some advice?”

 

“I’m not a counsellor.”

 

“I know,” the student – Laura, she believes to be her name – replied, “but I just…I picked up from class that you might be able to help and Miss. Spielsdorf isn’t all that…helpful?”

Carmilla couldn’t argue with that, from what she had heard the student counsellor was the most unhelpful soul on the planet but no one else would apply for the job so the school was left with no option but to keep her.

 

She gestured for Laura to get a chair and the girl let out a breath, smiling to herself as she pulled over one of the empty chairs and sat in front of Carmilla.

 

“What can I help you with?”

 

Laura bit her lip, and Carmilla had spoken to enough teenagers to know that the kid was nervous. The passage of time may have altered the way teenagers were viewed in the world, but the way teenagers presented themselves in certain situations had not be altered at all. Rather, Carmilla found that a nervous teenager in the twenty-first century presented the same way a nervous teenager presented in the seventeenth: twitchy.

 

Shutting her eyes, Laura seemed to come to a conclusion and after inhaling deeply she spoke at a thousand words a minute and Carmilla was take aback.

 

“I just need to know why I can’t seem to come out to my dad! I mean he’s probably the most accepting person on the planet and it’s not like we have a bad relationship, ya know? But I just can’t seem to get the words out and I know he wont do anything bad but like, I just don’t know how to go about this and LaF says I should just spit it out but I just _can’t_ and I’ve tried so many times to say it but the words get stuck in my throat and I end up saying something completely different or not at all, ya know? And you’re the only person that I can think of that might be able to help so I thought I’d come here and ask you and I’m sorry you probably have better things to be doing…”

 

Laura trailed off and looked at her nervously and all Carmilla could do was blink in response.

 

“Oh.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Laura breathed out again and shook her head, “I’ll just…I’ll just go.”

 

She reached down to pick up her bag again and was about to stand up when Carmilla remembered herself. She reached out and touched Laura’s arm softly.

 

“Wait. Sit down.”

 

Laura blinked at her, a frown creeping onto her features but she sat down and started fiddling with her fingers in her lap.

 

“You weren’t wrong. I do have experience with this, but believe me when I say it’s been a hell of a long time since I came out, so the situations are incredibly different.”

 

It was an understatement of a huge kind but Laura didn’t need to know that.

“So start at the beginning and tell me slowly exactly what you want me to help with.”

 

Laura sighed again for nodding and opening her mouth to begin.

 

* * *

 

She had a headache that was roughly the size of Mount Everest and it didn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. In fact, it appeared to be growing steadily. Like a truck running into her brain repeatedly and no number of stressed sighs or time spent rubbing her temples seemed to be helping.

 

She sighed again, looking around her before rolling her eyes at herself and getting out of the car. Double-checking she had the wine, she shut the door and locked her car before walking towards her mother’s house.

 

It wasn’t everyday she accepted her mother’s invitations for dinner. Mostly because she hated spending any amount of time with her mother, and thus voluntarily spending an evening with her was not on Carmilla’s top ten things to do with her time. Yet, when her mother had stepped into her fifth period class, loudly inviting her to dinner that night there was little she could do but accept without looking like a total bitch.

 

Now here she was, smiling at her mother and offering her the wine before allowing herself to be led through to the dining room where her mother had set the table with the expensive cutlery.

 

“What’s the occasion?”

 

Maman hummed in acknowledgement but didn’t answer, and Carm shuffled her feet awkwardly as she stood next to the table wondering what to do with herself.

 

“I mean,” she cleared her throat and tried to make herself appear for put together than she felt. “this all seems rather…fancy…considering this is just a family dinner.”

 

Her mother smirked and turned to face her, and Carmilla felt herself shrink under her gaze.

 

“We have some things to talk about.”

 

* * *

 

Monday morning came and Carmilla walked towards her classroom trying to hide the hangover she woke up with. She wasn’t so sure she was being successful with it, however, because students were looking at her as she walked past. Upon entering the classroom, however she stopped and stared at the woman standing at the front of the room, writing on the board.

 

“Sorry, but who the hell are you?”

 

The woman turned and flashed Carmilla a bright smile.

 

“Oh hi! I’m Miss Spielsdorf, the history teacher.”

 

* * *

She’s at a coffee shop when Laura finds her. It’s Wednesday and Carmilla’s been doing nothing but moping and drinking, and it’s probably showing.

 

Laura and her friends slide into the spare chairs at the table she’s occupying, and Carmilla just rolls her eyes as they stare at her.

 

“Hey,”

 

Laura frowns.

 

“Why did you quit?”

 

The eye roll Carmilla gives isn’t nearly as dramatic as she had been hoping for. “I didn’t quit. I got fired.”

 

Lafontaine gasps. Perry stutters. Laura stares.

 

“What?”

 

“I said,” she picks up her coffee, “I got fired. Contract terminated. Apparently my little stories were too devious for your impressionable minds.”

 

“But those stories rocked!” Lafontaine exclaims. Their face had gone several shades of red and Carmilla was slightly concerned they were about to explode. “You’ve had the highest class attendance in history!”

 

“Take it up with the dean,” Carmilla shrugged, “she’s the one that hired someone else.”

 

“Yeah, who sucks!” Laura yelled, startling everyone including herself. Blushing, she shrank back into her seat before continuing. “Ms Spielsdorf is nice and all, but she’s so boring and she doesn’t teach much. She just assigns us textbook reading and makes us answer questions.”

 

Carmilla snorted at that. The textbook was bogus.

 

“Yeah, Miss K, we actually liked going to your class. You made it interesting.”

 

As the three teenagers started voicing their protests to her spontaneous dismissal from her post, Carmilla felt herself actually caring about them. They were good kids, if a little insistent, and she was a little sad that she wouldn’t be teaching them anymore.

 

“Look, guys, I would love to return to Silas and finish of the year, but my mo- _the dean_ \- has asserted her authority. There’s nothing I can do.” She smiled at them. “I’m sorry.”

 

Deciding that that was the perfect time to make her escape, she threw few bills onto the table to cover her coffee and left before any of the students could open their mouths to speak.

 

* * *

 

Laura was nothing if not dedicated, so once Miss Karnstein had left the coffee shop, she immediately turned to her friends and announced they needed to do something.

 

“Like what?” LaF had asked, “We can’t exactly walk into the dean’s office and demand that she rehire Miss Karnstein.”

 

“No.” Laura agreed, “but we can show her how much we would rather have Miss Karnstein.”

 

* * *

By Friday, with a few chance encounters and several shared notes in class, Laura was certain that the majority of the graduating class was on board. So when the following Monday arrived and she walked through the hallway towards her locker, the grins and nods she received made her stomach twist in excitement.

 

First period arrived and Laura headed to the gym.

 

LaF was there, as was Perry. By the time the late bell rang, the bleachers were full and Laura was sure that there was more than just her year group there.

 

“Good turnout,” she whispered to LaF. They nodded and replied that Perry had mentioned it to a few people at the tutoring session.

 

“Everyone loves Miss K. Or, they love the classes she teaches. Also the replacement is a bit harsh.”

 

Laura nodded. It was true.

 

“Well, I’m glad. The more the better.”

 

LaF nods and turns to talk to a bunch of sophomores and so Laura took the time to walk around and say hello to everyone. She was still impressed with the turnout, and proud that she had put it together, and now she set about thanking everyone for coming and directing them to the table where Perry was conducting the making of signs.

 

Thus they continued for the first part of the day. Their numbers grew, too, once the student body caught wind of what was happening, and Laura quite enjoyed herself. Until, of course, the gym doors burst open and the dean walked in, announcing that everyone who didn’t wish to be suspended should head to class.

 

No one moved, and Laura was proud at her student body for standing together.

 

Then, from the back somewhere came a small cry of, “You fired Miss Karnstein!”.

 

“Yeah!” Someone else joined in, “And we’re not going anywhere until you bring her back!”

 

So much happened in the next twenty minutes that it would definitely take a few days for Laura to remember everything, but she was certain that the Dean was not prepared for the onslaught of angry students that, united as one, began a slow chant that built and built until it was an uproar.

 

_“Silas for Students! Silas for Students!”_

 

* * *

 

She may have gotten detention, but the look on the dean’s face was so worth it.

 

* * *

 

When her dad picked her up he looked considerably less pissed than she had expected, which was nice, but also rather suspicious considering she had literally just gotten detention for the first time in her life. And because she had organised a student protest to try and force the dean to rehire a teacher she may or may not have a crush on, of all things.

 

But when she slid into the passenger seat and turned to her dad he was smiling and cheerful and it made her stomach twist in worry because, _why wasn’t he yelling?_

 

“So,” she started, when he didn’t say anything, “thanks for uh, picking me up.”

 

“No problem, kiddo.” He replied, smiling at her for a second before turning back to the road.

 

She nodded, swallowing. Running through her brain were all the possible reasons why her dad was not yelling at her right now, and the only logical one was that he was currently possessed by an alien species that was eating his brain because she distinctly remembers when she was six and she had kneed the neighbour in the groin and her dad had grounded her. Surely organising a student protest for her hypothetical lesbian crush should have resulted in more yelling than was currently happening?

 

Laura definitely thought so, but then they were pulling into the driveway and her dad was humming cheerfully and Laura was cautiously following him into the house where he announced that they would be ordering pizza for dinner and what would she like him to order? It was all very off putting.

 

So when the pizza arrived forty minutes later, she couldn’t hold back anymore and blurted out “Why aren’t you angry with me?” as her dad picked the mushroom off of his slice.

 

“Why would I be angry?” He asked.

 

“I got detention.” She deadpanned, “for organising a student protest. Against the dean. Why haven’t you grounded me?”

 

Her dad sighed and put his slice of pizza down before looking at her, and Laura was a mixture of anxiety and suspense.

 

“I’m not angry, because I’m proud.” He smiled, and Laura frowned. “You did a great thing, stepping up against the dean. Would I have preferred you didn’t get detention? Sure. But you stood up for what you thought was right. That teacher, what’s her name?”

 

“Miss Karnstein.”

 

He nodded. “Yeah, she seems to have made an impact on the school. I’ve heard good things about her floating around. And your grades have improved. Not only that, but you seem happier. How could I be angry when you’re fighting for what’s best for you?”

 

She smiled at him, and he nodded before picking up his pizza again and returning to the task of removing the mushrooms.

 

“She must be pretty special,” he said a moment later, “outside of what I’ve heard, I man. To motivate you to step up like that.”

 

“Yeah,” Laura felt her face flush, “she is.”

 

* * *

 

The giving of detention didn’t sway the silent protest that took place over the next week, and it was Friday when the Dean finally called for a whole-school assembly to address the issue at hand.

 

The results were far from what Laura had hoped.

 

“I’m sure you’ve all noticed the absence of the history teacher, Miss Karnstein,” the dean began. “And it is true, I terminated her contact due to her…less than conventional standards of teaching.

 

“Once this small protest began I did get in touch with Miss Karnstein, and I offered her the position back. She was very flattered by all of your enthusiasm for the class.”

  
There was a small cheer from the students, and the Dean motioned for it to stop so she could continue.

 

“However,” The Dean paused, and Laura found herself leaning forward in her seat. “Miss Karnstein has accepted a job in New York. A professorship at a university, if I am correct. She sends her apologies, but she will not be returning to Silas.”

 

The Dean walked out, and the students remained seated, silence filling the auditorium as her words sunk in.

 

Miss Karnstein was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

 

* * *

 

**_two years later_ **

“Lafontaine! What are you doing?” Laura laughed despite trying to sound angry as LaF led her by the hand across the campus. LaF didn’t answer, instead leading her towards to only coffee house on campus that didn’t completely suck and pulling her through the doors. “Seriously LaF! What is going on?”

 

“Shhh!” LaF snapped, winking before leading her slowly through the sea of people. They pointed towards a table in the corner, smirking as Laura looked in the direction they were pointing before back at LaF, eyes wide. “Go on, then.”

Laura shook her head, smiling as she wandered over to the table. She paused, waiting to see if the occupant would look up. When they didn’t, she sighed before laughing at herself.

 

“Hey.”

 

Carmilla’s head shot up, and she frowned when she saw Laura standing awkwardly by the table.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Can I sit?” Laura gestured to the free chair, and Carmilla nodded, leaning over to remove the stack of papers from the table so Laura wouldn’t be completely hidden from view. “Thanks.”

 

Carmilla nodded again, and Laura looked around, uncertain as to whether the awkwardness was from the both of them or just her.

 

“So, you’re a student here?” Carmilla finally broke the silence. Laura nodded.

 

“Yeah, LaF and Perry are too.”

 

Carmilla smiled. “It’s good you all stuck together. Having a few familiar faces around can be a good thing.”

 

“It has been, yeah.” Laura smiled at Carmilla before nodding to the stack of papers. “Why do you have so much marking this early in the semester?”

 

Carmilla glanced from the papers back to Laura before smirking. “Oh. This isn’t marking. I’m actually rewriting the high school textbook. That thing was a complete butchery of a great subject.”

 

“So you’re writing it from your personal experience, then?”

 

Carmilla’s eyes widened and Laura smirked.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Oh come on.” Laura rolled her eyes before smiling playfully and leaning in to whisper dramatically. “I know what you are.”

 

Carmilla rolled her eyes, waving Laura off with a wave of her hand, and the student laughed again.

 

“Seriously though, it wasn’t that hard to put together. LaF and I figured it out just after you left. We were talking about the things you told us in class. The stories? And we looked them up. Some were kinda hard to find, unless you went deep into the library archives. So I said sort of as a joke that you must have been there to see them, and LaF suggested you were a, ya know, vampire?” Laura shrugged, “It’s cool. I mean, you must have seen a lot.”

 

Carmilla was staring at her now, and Laura felt her face flush, and she wondered briefly if she had said too much. “But uh, yeah! We passed the class, even if Miss Spielsdorf was kinda sucky. And now here we are!”

 

She waved her hands around, and Carmilla broke her stare to laugh with her.

 

“Oh!” Laura jumped slightly in her seat, “and I came out! Sorta. It kinda just happened after I got detention for the protest. I mean, my dad sorta knew already but I guess organising a protest in the name of the teacher you kinda had a crush on just forces you out of the closet, ya know?” Her eyes widened when she realised what she’d just said, and she backtracked, stuttering to try and cover herself.

 

Carmilla raised an eyebrow.

 

“You had a crush on me”

 

“Uhhhh, well….” Laura felt herself blush deeper and Carmilla leant forward, folding her arms over the table and cocking her head to the side.

 

“So, cupcake, can I get you a coffee?”

 

Biting her lip, Laura nodded.

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you're here because of 13 lives i'm really sorry about that and i hope you like this happier fic


End file.
